The Henson Journals

[48]

Saturday, December 26th, 1925.

We Englishmen being far northerly, do not open our mouths in the cold air wide enough to grace a southern tongue: but are observed by all other nations to speak exceeding close and inward so that to smatter Latin with an English mouth, is as ill hearing as law French.

v. Milton. On Education. v. Works iii. 488

A thaw set in soon after day–break and made the landscape patchy, and the roads spongy. In the afternoon I walked round the Park with Linetta, encountering nobody, a fact sufficiently explained by the shouting from the Football field, where some popular match was being played.

I read a good deal, and made notes, but again a day passed without anything having been written. The Labour report on "Russia" is a document of considerable but melancholy interest. Reading between the lines one can perceive the sinister truth which yet their class–bigotry held the signatories from owning. Even the disgusting handling of marriages arouses no repugnance.

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